First thing to do is to analyze what the promise of large language models like GPT-3 and GPT-4 is. There is a professional video available which explains the advantages:[1] #5:00
1. Question answering
2. Text analysis
3. language translation
4. creation of videos
These applications are mentioned, because there are papers available in which language models were used in this context. The surprising situation is, that even gpt-4 is not capable in doing so. Let us investigate this point in detail.
The ability of AI Software for solving q&a problems and translating text automatically is nothing which is completely new. IBM Watson was presented in 2011 to the public and it was assumed that the underlying technology will help doctors to make better diagnosis. Also the ability to translate natural language in real time was shown 10 years ago. The interesting situation is, that none of these tasks were demanded from the end users. There are no doctors available which have a need for IBM Watson or gpt-4 to do their job and if someone likes to translate between two language he will have to learn both of them fluently.
So what is the deal of Artificial Intelligence? The problem is that modern technology like robots and neural network are on the first look capable of doing a certain task and on the other hand they don't. In the 1990s there was a company “Helpmate” founded by Engelberger. The promise of these early hospital robots was to increase the efficiency in the health care services. Technically the robots were highly advanced. They were able to move autonomously at the corridor and have avoided obstacles. At the same time the robot haven't shown an advantage over human staff, so the project was canceled after a while. The same situation is visible for IBM Watson and more recently for GPT-4.
All these technologies are working by it's own understanding with superior performance. The latest gpt-4 model is able to translate a text much faster and more accurate between two languages than any human. At the same time it is trivial to predict what the outcome will be. There is no effect, and there is no demand for such technology. GPT-4 and all the other neural networks are nothing but a waste of time. The engineers find it exciting to show their capabilities in benchmarks and lots of youtube videos are made to promote this technology but at the end there is no practical applications.
The average customer won't notice the insignificance because if the hype around one technology is over the next improved language model gets released. Instead of asking for which concrete purpose the current GPT-3 transformer networks can be utilized the developers have invented the successor which works completely different.
Instead of asking what the future has to offer it makes sense to take a look back and ask why technology of the past wasn't helpful at all. In contrast to a famous believe the Helpmate hospital robot was using advanced technology. There is no need to improve the technology or reinvent the system with more cameras. The heretical question is why wasn't the robot used in a real hospital? Was it a lack of training or has it do with the AI technology itself?
Let us take a step back and understand what the ideology of the AI engineers is. They have recognized very soon that the IBM Watson software wasn't helpful for practical applications. Instead of admit that the Q&A technology in general doesn't make sense for doctors, lawyers and even normal users of video games, they have improved the software into more advanced neural networks. The current chatgpt software is much more powerful than the previous IBM Watson project. At the same time it will become a completely failure in terms of practical applications. Nobody is able to write an essay or answer a trivial question with the software. And similar to the IBM Watson project the explanation will be that the more powerful gpt-4 model which is more powerful can be used for practical applications.
The uninformed public assumes that the AI community is researching something which has an impact to the daily life. The hope is that self driving cars will help human drivers, kitchen robots will make cooking easier, and language models allow to write books. The sad situation is, that none of these tasks can be done with Artificial Intelligence. What humans want to do instead is to acquire these skills by themself. That means, human want to learn how to drive a truck, they want to cook with its own hand and they want to learn foreign language to understand the opponent.
References
[1] Chat GPT 4 Was Just ANNOUNCED (Open AI GPT 4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW5xgCxXwdY